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You don’t have to be an economist to viscerally comprehend the shortcomings of Kevin Glenn’s hometown, Detroit.

Throughout its miles of abandoned buildings and urban prairie, in half-empty neighbourhoods preyed on by metal scrappers and gun-toting vigilantes, the Motor City represents what appears be to the hellish end to the American Dream.

Yet the B.C. Lions quarterback remains proud of his broken-down city, now showing signs of resilience and renewal as artists, hipsters and young urbanites move in to re-purpose decaying buildings, plant organic farms and where corporations such as Quicken Loans are turning Detroit into a growing tech hub.

“They’ve been hit with a lot of negativity, coming from different directions at one time,” Glenn said. “It hasn’t just been the fall of GM (General Motors) and Chrysler, the civic scandal, the mortgage foreclosures and the bankruptcy. A bunch of things hit the city all at once. But now they’re going through a rebuilding stage. I think the city will eventually come back around. There are people making it happen. It’ll take a lot of years. But I was born and raised in Detroit, and I’ll continue to love it to the day I die. The reason I am who I am is because of Detroit.”

If his hometown boldly is being re-imagined, so, too, is a re-appreciation of Glenn as a quarterback, now beginning his 14th season -- but his first as a Lion -- in Saturday’s Canadian Football League debut against the Edmonton Eskimos.

Typically, he gets to start because another man is hurt, acknowledged No. 1 quarterback Travis Lulay, still not all the way back from shoulder surgery.

The standout stand-in: that’s the Detroiter’s CFL career in a nutshell, a man with a track record of moving into distressed neighourhoods and turning them into viable entities.

The Lions became Glenn’s third team in a span of only six months when B.C. sent a first-round draft pick to the Ottawa RedBlacks on May 13, acquiring the player who was Ottawa’s first choice in the December expansion draft. The month before, in November, Glenn was finishing up his second season as a Calgary Stampeder with a career-best passer rating of 100.3.

In 13 starts, he went 10-3 for a team that finished with the league’s best overall record at 14-4. Glenn threw for 18 touchdowns and had only seven intercepted. His completion percentage of 66.6 per cent was the second highest of his career.

He has the man to which the fledging RedBlacks were going to pin their hopes and dreams. And yet, when Ottawa signed free agent Henry Burris in February, Glenn quickly was yesterday’s man. Concerns over the length of Lulay’s rehab forced the Lions hand -- and Glenn was on the move yet again.

“When you go back to that video from the (expansion) draft, and you see the faces of my family, we were thrilled to go there (Ottawa),” Glenn says. “But everything changed when February rolled around. That kind of stuff . . . it’s tough, sometimes, to take the personal stuff out of the equation. You build friendships and relationships with people. It’s tough when that is removed. When you can just focus on football being a business, you stay sane. You don’t get irate and say things that are unnecessary.”

In the National Football League, Glenn’s historical counterpart might be Earl Morrall, a peripatetic career backup who spent 21 seasons in the league and quarterbacked two of the most dominant teams in NFL history -- the 1968 Baltimore Colts (who finished 13-1 but lost to Joe Namath and the New York Jets in the Super Bowl) and the 1972 Miami Dolphins. The latter is the only NFL team to finish a season at 17-0.

Morrall -- a native Michigander, like Glenn -- produced some of the most remarkable passing stats the game has seen, but he is remembered mostly as a footnote, as the second option behind Johnny Unitas in Baltimore and Bob Griese in Miami.

Many CFL fans, who don’t have access to the nourishing and tangy cold, hard facts turned out by league statistician Steve Daniel, might not realize that Glenn is the 10th leading passer in the history of the CFL.

Every player ahead of him is either in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame or will be (in the case of retired Anthony Calvillo).

“Some of those players are in the Hall for winning championships,” Daniel says. “Glenn does not have one of those yet. That’s a downer, as he’s only played in one Grey Cup (Glenn started for Calgary in the 2012 game). To his credit, he only missed the 2007 season (his best-ever season, when Glenn was the East Division’s most outstanding player) because of an unfortunate injury late in the East playoffs.”

Except for that bad break (and Glenn is the CFL’s patron saint of bad breaks) he might have played in the Grey Cup that year, and perhaps be viewed in a much different light if he’d brought home the Cup.

This is a player, after all, who was traded from Saskatchewan to Toronto to Winnipeg on the same day in 2004.

This is a player who was released by the Blue Bombers in 2008, a year after he was runner-up to the CFL’s most outstanding player.

This is a player who went to Hamilton and turned a 3-15 team into the second-best in the East Division in his first year. Glenn threw for 12,740 yards and 70 touchdowns (vs. 41 interceptions) as a Tiger-Cat but was traded to the Stampeders because Hamilton GM Bob O’Billovich wanted “a better athlete.”

And this is a player who went 20-8 over two seasons in Calgary, then got the ‘Here-you-take-’im’ treatment from the Stamps and RedBlacks.

“I’ve never been given anything in this league,” Glenn acknowledges. “Nobody has said, ‘Here are the keys to the car, go drive it.’ It’s more, ‘We’re going to bring this guy in, that guy in, and you’re going to have to wait your turn.’ It’s always been like that. I haven’t complained about it. All I ask is that you be fair to me, and give me an opportunity. I think, from what I’ve done in this league, I deserve that.”

Whatever Glenn has done is his long CFL career, it’s never been quite enough. Yet few have ever matched his grace and craftsmanship and his ability to get along with teammates. He has a long fuse and could be one of the least petulant athletes you’ll meet, a martyr to the ethic of team play.

“He’s the most underrated player in the history of the CFL,” suggests Sam Young, his former teammate with the Blue Bombers and the Illinois State Sycamores.

“Despite the numbers he’s put up, he’s always having to prove himself. It’s ridiculous to me. I wouldn’t call it bad luck. It’s a conspiracy. Look at his numbers, and tell me he shouldn’t get more respect than he does.”

Football players are no strangers to strategy, and we’re not just talking about what’s inside the playbook. Glenn has another game plan that extends beyond the locker room.

He’s partnered with former CFL running back Walter Bender in a couple of Tim Hortons franchises in the Detroit area, trains youth, high school and college quarterbacks with another buddy in a company called Quarterback University and is involved with Young and former college teammate Armando Andrade in a start-up clothing line, AskMotto.

“Some people don’t understand that,” Glenn says. “We’re athletes, and we love to do this. But that competitive nature can also transfer to the business world. My big thing is, I’m always trying to better my situation. And I think I’m in a better situation here. I didn’t know Travis’ situation. I had no clue to the timetable of his rehab when I got to training camp. It’s not a situation where you were misled into thinking it was one thing, then turned out to be something else. I think the last two years, in Calgary, have opened some doors as to how the quarterback position is perceived. You need two quarterbacks, even three, if you want to be competitive.”

It’s a mistake to think that Glenn doesn’t have an ego. He loves football, throwing footballs and wants to be The Man as much as any quarterback. His gift -- some would suggest it’s a curse -- is that his competitive soul doesn’t take up a whole room, allowing space for nothing else.

If he’s single-minded, it’s in wanting his team to succeed, more than his own contribution to that end.

“This is a team sport and you have to swallow your pride sometimes,” he says. “I’m known as a player who’s been through this and that and doesn’t complain.

When I see Travis and John (Beck, the Lions’ third quarterback), I see guys with the same mindset. Nobody has any hidden agendas. Nobody is trying to sabotage the next guy from being successful. We’re all here to help each other.”

Glenn knows about challenges. Did we mention he’s from Detroit? And like his battered hometown, the resilient but ringless quarterback is looking ahead to tomorrow, allowing himself to dream of what could be.

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Made in Motor City: Detroit Drives Kevin Glenn

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